


In Our Indifferent Century (a Missing Armour remix)

by lostlenore



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: 2015 Camelot Remix, Alternate Universe - Actors, Gen, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-21 11:03:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3689859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostlenore/pseuds/lostlenore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Second verse, same as the first</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Our Indifferent Century (a Missing Armour remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Missing Armour](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3347594) by [leviathans_moon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leviathans_moon/pseuds/leviathans_moon). 



> My first time ever doing Remix! It was super challenging but a lot of fun, so thank you mods, and Leviathans_Moon! 
> 
> Title is Thomas Hardy.

 

 _"Why are we even here?"_ _whispered_ _the handsome blond lieutenant._

_He stared into the middle distance, contemplating the hellish fog of war, and tipped his chin a little to the left so that the light would catch the strong line of his jaw._

_The young soldier whom he was embracing shed a single manly tear. His face was dirty, but the attractive kind of dirty, strategically scrubbed with fistfuls of dirt by someone who was paid a hefty salary to emphasize his frankly ludicrous cheekbones._

_The two of them swayed as a spout wired into the ground several feet away coughed up a load of sand in approximation of a grenade. The camera panned out to better frame the sunset behind them through the rolls of barbed wire._

_The boom mike swung and caught a sleeping extra in the face._

_War was hell._

 

“That’s the last one for today, good job boys,” the director shouted down into the fake trench. “Rest up tonight and make sure to take a look at your schedules, we’ve got two more days and a lot of scenes to get through before you’re back in studio seven for the flight sequence.”

There was a loud cheer from the crew, and the cameramen began hoisting their equipment out, stopping to slap the backs of extras who were covered in fake blood, or gathering the prop bayonets.  

Merlin made a cursory attempt to scrub the sand out of his hair and ended up transferring most of it to his coat in a cloud of dust. Beside him Arthur sighed deeply and kept sighing until Merlin broke and handed him back the package of B&H Blacks he'd kept safely tucked in his jacket that they'd been passing back and forth for their last week of shooting in what Gwaine liked to refer to as The Pit. He fiddled with the loose coins in his pocket and contemplated the shells of the fake grenades that lined the walls of the trench.  

Arthur lit two cigarettes at once, like he'd had a rough day at the office and the makeup crew didn't coddle him obscenely by stopping every hour so they could sponge on more foundation and stop his nose from being 'too shiny,' whatever the fuck that meant. 

'These are shit," Arthur hacked out, a rough smoker's cough. "I've seen your paychecks Merlin, why the fuck are you smoking these." 

"'M not usually stupid enough to try double-fisting them, maybe," Merlin thumped him helpfully on the back, and was rewarded for his trouble with a baleful, watery-eyed glare. "Or the immortality thing. Yeah probably that." 

Arthur reached around so he could pinch Merlin's shoulder right on the triskele tattoo, because Merlin hadn't been Arthur's manservant in over a thousand years but Arthur had always been a bit of a twat. His eyes burned gold, just for a moment, and the world around him stuttered in its step long enough for him to pluck the second cigarette from Arthur's lips before the drag of Merlin's thumb over Arthur's barely parted lips snapped it back into place. 

Arthur laughed, a bit breathless, a bit raw. 

"Showoff." 

Merlin was stopped from pointing out the _utter hypocrisy_ of that statement by the tornado of the props master stripping them all of their weapons and chivying them up the ladder to the trailers. The change in his pocket jingled all the way up and he could feel, without turning to look, the glare Arthur was burning into the back of his head. 

They spilled out onto the grass, into the dying embers of the sun. A breeze stirred the field around them, tall stalks of grass that waved lazily and Merlin let his eyes fall shut in the fast-fading twilight. When he opened them Arthur was in front of him again, favoring him with one of those looks that seemed to spin out and out and on into their own private universe.

Merlin would have thought, between the two of them, Arthur would've been the one with the power to stop time. He managed it well enough without magic though, was the scary thing. And Merlin had on the tip of his tongue a thousand retorts for a thousand memories like this one, and was overwhelmed, for a moment, with shared history that lay unspooled between them, wide and vast. Enough to swallow them both, and spit them back out. 

And then he blinked, and was back in a grassy field in the middle of fuck-knows-where, being paid to playact his own life with Arthur _with Arthur_ and it was all so absurd he had to laugh. 

"Deja vu all over again."

"Merlin you idiot-" Arthur groaned, though he was smiling. 

Merlin favored him with a smile in return, then plucked the fattest coin from his pocket and waggled it in front of Arthur's bemused face.

"Heads or tails, you think?"

Arthur snorted. "Like it even matters anymore, you cheater."

"That was literally ages ago. Are you seriously still holding a grudge?"  Merlin clucked. Arthur made a very rude gesture, which Merlin manfully ignored as he tossed the coin up into the flat blue of the sky. He squinted, lips still clamped around his burned out cigarette, as the metal flickered with the day's last sunlight before it fell like a star back into the palm of his hand.  

They walked on together, close enough the knuckles of their hands brushed once, and then with every step they took into the future.  

 

 


End file.
